Dying to Live: The Shifter City Complete Series

by Liam Kingsley

  “I don’t know why your body is responding this way,” Snow said as he wrapped Killian’s arm once more. “But if it continues to spread before I figure out how to treat it, I might have to amputate.”

  “Yeah, let’s not do that,” Killian said with a wince.

  “I will do my best to avoid it,” Snow said. “But I can’t promise anything.”

  “Do you have any ideas at all?”

  Snow sighed as he finished wrapping Killian’s arm, then he rubbed one temple. “As far as I know, this is the first bite that a turned shifter has sustained from a born shifter. I will be running tests on Damian as well as yourself. If a significant genetic change has occurred in the shifter DNA itself, that could explain the reaction, and may even lead me to a treatment. In the meantime, you’re quarantined.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Killian. I will have your lesson plans brought to you, and anything else you need. I can’t have this turning into an epidemic before I figure it out.”

  “I’m not going to bite anybody,” Killian said wryly.

  “First, you cannot possibly know that for sure. We’ve all done things we swore we would never do under the influence of this DNA. Second, I cannot guarantee that only a bite will spread it. It is entirely possible…even probable…that simple exposure to the wound would be enough. Or exposure to your body fluids, for that matter.”

  “Trust me, Henry, nobody’s been exposed to my body fluids for a very long time.”

  Snow ignored the attempt at self-deprecating humor, and gave him a deadpan look. “Sweat in the gym. Spittle in the air after you sneeze. The condensation in your breath. You are, as all mammals are, a walking, breathing, bagful of fluid.”

  “Gross.”

  “Biology tends to be that way.”

  “Yeah.” Killian sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. “What about Grover?”

  “I can bring him home with me until you have recovered.”

  “Thanks, Henry. And thank Pan for me when you get the chance.”

  “I will. What would you like me to have brought to you?”

  “Lesson plans, definitely. Laptop. A couple of books, don’t care what they are. And does this TV work?” He gestured to the flat, black rectangle mounted on the wall.

  “It does. Here.” Snow pulled a remote off of the counter in the room and set it on Killian’s chest. “Try to get some rest,” he said. From this distance, Killian could clearly see the worry in Henry’s chestnut eyes.

  “Rest and plenty of fluids,” Killian said, his lips quirking in mild amusement. “Just like the flu.”

  “Best to treat it that way until we know more,” Snow agreed. “I will be in with your lab results in a few hours.”

  “Thanks.”

  Snow left, and Killian turned the TV on with a sigh. He flipped through the channels looking for news, but there didn’t seem to be any. Sitcoms and reality shows were his only choices, and he finally settled on reruns of a show that he remembered enjoying in college. After ten minutes or so, he decided that he must have been way more inebriated than he remembered being if this show had stimulated him at all. He hoped someone would come in soon with his things. He heard footsteps in the hall, and his hope grew; but the glass wall showed him it was only Bernadette, the nurse, bustling to the intake desk. She grabbed a clipboard and walked away again, throwing a wave at him as she passed. She enjoyed having patients, in small numbers; shifters were rarely sick or injured, and they healed quickly. Most of Bernadette’s time was spent helping shifters give birth, but even that only happened once in a very long while. Bernadette’s days (as she never failed to complain to Killian when she dropped Jem off at school) were generally spent with research and filing, both of which she hated with every fiber of her being.

  A blaze of electric blue caught Killian’s wandering eye, and a grin spread across his face. Pan was in the hall now, limping slightly as he walked behind Bernadette. He paused in front of Killian’s room and grinned back at him through the glass, then went for the handle. Bernadette grabbed his arm and pointed to a square of paper posted to the door. Killian, of course, couldn’t read it from where he was, but he could guess what it said. Quarantine. That bit of paper was as bad as a prison sentence. Pan’s face fell, and he waved apologetically at Killian, who smiled and shrugged in response. Killian was almost relieved that their communication had been wholly non-verbal. He felt the press of time and smelled a whiff of death on the air; he thought it must be his own. Killian didn’t trust himself to be close to Pan; not now, with his own mortality staring him in the face. He knew he would cross a line that must not be crossed, throw caution to the wind; then, if he did survive, he would lose everything anyway.

  Pan smiled and turned away. In a flash of desperation, Killian kicked off the starchy hospital sheets and leapt out of bed to run to the wall, dragging his IV behind him. He knocked on the glass and Pan whipped his head around. Killian held a hand to his ear in the shape of a phone, and pointed to the ancient beige monstrosity which sat beside his bed. Pan’s face lit up with a grin and he nodded before being pulled away by the gentle, but insistent, Bernadette. With a sigh of relief and a wave of nausea, Killian stumbled back to bed, embarrassed and confused at his own impulsivity. Dizziness overwhelmed him, and once more he was pulled into a dark, confusing sleep.

  “Knock, knock,” Snow said as he entered the room, rousing Killian from sleep. “Glad to see you’re resting. Bernadette informed me of your little rebellion. Do I have to remind you how serious your condition is?”

  “Could be,” Killian corrected him through a yawn. “My condition could be serious. What’s up, doc?”

  “Every time,” Snow muttered.

  “Oh, come on, you love it.”

  Snow stared at him expressionlessly. “It makes me want to kill a rabbit.”

  Killian laughed from his belly, then winced. The pressure from his own laughter seemed to make a fire ignite in his gut, sending trails of flaming ants over his nerves. He needed to move. He twitched his legs, stretching and flexing, trying to get rid of the microscopic prickles. Snow watched him thoughtfully for a moment before pulling out a folder and flipping it open.

  “I ran every test I could imagine, then sent your samples to the lab for more. I wanted to be thorough, which is why it took so long.”

  Killian frowned. There wasn’t a clock in the room, but the light hadn’t seemed to change. He rolled his eyes at himself as he realized that the light was artificial, and that his room didn’t even have a window.

  “How long?” He asked.

  “Twenty hours,” Snow replied. “You slept for most of it.”

  Killian groaned. He’d had things to do that morning. He mentally filed the to-do list for another day.

  “The results came back, and they are interesting. Unfortunately they do not tell me how to solve this problem,” Snow sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It seems that young Damian has a sort of…alpha form of the DNA. It behaves like a virus. It is attacking your cells and rewriting the DNA structure. A violent process, and it is responsible for that rash. We incubated the sample and have been watching it, but when I last checked there had been no change. The cells are being destroyed, and something in the DNA is keeping your natural defenses from stepping in.”

  “So, what, I’m just going to…melt?”

  Snow hesitated a moment before answering. “Not literally, certainly,” he said finally. “I wish I had a better answer for you, but I simply do not know. The samples we have are isolated from your body. They are losing the fight, but it is possible that your body’s natural defenses will override whatever this is. I wish I could say that it was likely, but….” Snow trailed off with a shake of his head.

  “Then we amputate,” Killian said definitively. “Before this thing spreads.”

  Snow hesitated again, then sighed. “I’m afraid that would be useless at this point,” he said. “The infection is in your blood stream. We might have been ab
le to stop it if we had cut off the blood flow within the first seven minutes, but after that….” He shook his head. “Amputation will not help you now. You are feeling it in other parts of your body, correct? The hallucinations, the restless legs….”

  “The nausea,” Killian interrupted, making a face. “Yeah, I hear you Henry. So what do we do?”

  “We wait it out,” Snow said simply. “The lab, under my direction, will continue to study your samples and try to find a cure. We are not giving up on you.”

  “Chemo,” Killian said suddenly. “This thing’s like a cancer, right? Why not try chemo?”

  “The DNA which Damian transferred to you is far stronger than the DNA in your own cells. If chemo did anything at all, it would only speed up the process.”

  “Oh.”

  They sat in somber silence for a long moment as Killian faced the possibility of never leaving this room alive. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go down, he thought. He was supposed to raise generations of wolves in his school, build a solid foundation for the education of his species. He was supposed to be a revolutionary, a trailblazer. He was supposed to bear witness to the social evolution of a new species on earth. Now, in an instant, that was all gone. He should have held Damian tighter. Should have tried to talk him down. He shook those thoughts away as soon as he became aware of them. Nothing good could come of should-ing all over himself.

  “Did I get any phone calls while I was sleeping?” He asked.

  “No,” Snow said. “But Bernadette asked me to tell you not to worry about it. I am not sure what that is about, but frankly I am far too busy to care. As long as you are not arranging a jailbreak, feel free to use the phone as much as you please. Oh, one other thing….” Snow slid a file box across the floor, settling it next to Killian’s bed in arms’ reach. “Ten books, lesson plans, laptop, and some notebooks and pens. Old school, I know, but I always find I think better when I write out my thoughts longhand. Typing, while efficient, is more disconnected than writing with a pen.”

  “Thank you, Henry. That was very thoughtful.”

  “My job is to think,” Henry said with a rare smile. “And it is your job to lie there and rest. I will have some food brought in for you in a little while.”

  Killian grimaced. He didn’t think he could stomach anything, but he didn’t want to turn Henry down. He would do his best to follow doctor’s orders for as long as he could. His legs twitched again, involuntarily, begging him to leap out of bed and run. With his nerves firing the way they were, there was no telling how long that would actually be.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Saturday was always the busiest day for Pan and Boris. Usually Pan enjoyed the madness, talking to the customers, playing with their hair; but today was different. His mind was with Killian at the hospital, and he found himself drifting through his day only half-aware. In his distracted state, he managed to over-bleach one customer, cut a trim far too short, and dye a woman’s hair maroon when she’d asked for light brown. After this last fiasco, Pan took himself into the back room to calm down and focus. Boris followed a few moments later.

  “You are distracted,” Boris said tiredly. “I am also.”

  “How’s Damian doing?” Pan asked.

  “He is…upset. Back and forth all day to hospital and meditation group. Natalia handles today, I handle tomorrow.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed heavily. “He cries all night. Killian is his favorite, more favorite than me, I think. Is killing him, this….” He waved his hands around for a moment, searching for the right word.

  “Guilt?” Pan offered.

  “Yes, the guilt. It kills him. I tried to help, but only make worse.”

  “Should we close? Before we ruin any more heads?”

  “Is best,” Boris nodded. He left the back room and flipped the sign around. Pan grabbed a broom. They cleaned quickly and half-heartedly, trying to depart before anyone else stopped by for a fresh style or trim. Pan simply didn’t have the energy for it today, so consumed was he by his worry for Killian and Damian. Boris, likewise, was worried for them; though his greatest fear was that Killian would die from his injuries, and that Damian would spend his life bearing that burden. Having known the pain and torment of an accidental kill himself, he could not bear for his son to live with that curse on his head. Which was, in reality, why he was so hard on the boy; he was terrified that somehow, someday, Damian would fall victim to the violence of the shifter gene. Now that it had happened, to one extent or another, Boris was left feeling helpless. That helplessness filled the shop with a heavy grey mood, and Pan, sensitive to energies, quickly felt suffocated by it.

  Escaping into the fresh air never felt so freeing. As Boris lumbered off to manage and support his family, Pan was left alone to wander the winding cobblestone paths which snaked between the solid, practical buildings and around the aesthetic trees. Since settling here, the wolves had tried to add decorative touches to their city; but no matter what they did, it was still, at its core, a refugee camp. Vines, Pan thought to himself. We should cover the buildings in vines. His feet brought him to the hospital of their own accord, and he found himself wandering inside without a conscious thought. It was quiet, as usual. Through the glass wall, he watched as Killian twitched and moaned in his sleep. He was as pale as the sheets, his raven hair contrasting sharply with his sallow skin.

  “Terrible, isn’t it?” Bernadette said behind him, making him jump. “He’s been asleep all day. Nearly twenty hours, give or take. Dr. Snow didn’t go home last night, either. Took naps in the break room instead. If they don’t sort this out soon…well. How’s your knee, dear?”

  “Fit as a fiddle,” Pan said with a vague smile. “Is he in a coma?”

  “No dear, just sleeping. The doctor will wake him up soon, I imagine.”

  Pan nodded. “I’ll call tomorrow, then. Thanks, B.”

  “Sure thing, love. Before you go, I saw what you did to Maude’s hair….”

  Pan winced, and opened his mouth to explain, but Bernadette waved him off.

  “I was wondering if you could repeat that error? I was thinking streaks, maybe, or maybe just underneath? I used to do all sorts of wild things with my hair before coming here. I’d sort of forgotten. You know how it is when something like that happens. One emergency, and your whole life goes off the rails. Would you mind? It would mean so much to me.”

  “I would love to,” Pan said, wrapping an arm around her plump shoulders and giving a squeeze. “It’s time we all got back to ourselves, I think.”

  The thought stayed with him as he left the hospital. Bernadette wasn’t alone. All of them had sort of been limping tentatively through life for the last thirteen years or so, afraid to do anything that wasn’t necessary for survival. Pan thought he’d licked that particular insecurity when he started working at the barbershop with Boris. Before he got there, the shop was a simple, basic necessity. Boris did trims and practical cuts, and that was all. Pan had brought his own flair to the shop, practicing his love of hair and style in a way that revitalized the town. He’d noticed the difference, too. Once he’d given a few people something frivolous and beautiful to take care of, changes began popping up all over town. Houses were painted in bright colors. Trees and flower gardens were planted for no other reason than beautification. He’d injected a spark of life into the city, and it had become his mission to maintain that life.

  Ironically, that mission had come at the expense of his own pre-shifter life. He’d allowed his other interests to wither and die on the vine.

  “Literally,” he murmured, thinking of Killian. He’d wanted Killian. He’d arranged his life to accommodate as many accidental meetings as he could, just trying to catch Killian’s eye. He’d imagined that he had when he noticed that Killian danced right along with him, adjusting his own schedule by a few minutes this way or that way to match Pan’s. He’d waited for Killian to make the first move, lazy in his comfort zone. The fear that the opportunity was slipping throug
h his fingers gripped his heart, and he jogged a little faster, trying to escape it. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t see Eulyssa walk around a bend toward him, pushing her baby in a stroller.

  Too late, he tried to stop, tripping over his own feet and then the stroller, arms and legs flying as his face connected with the ground. The baby screamed, Eulyssa screamed, and he was on his feet in a flash, checking on mother and child.

  “Oh god, I’m so sorry, is he okay?”

  “Yes, he’s fine,” Eulyssa said soothingly. “Aren’t you, buddy? Yes, you are. He’s just a little scared, is all. There we go, no more tears!”

  The baby’s eyes locked onto Pan’s shocking blue hair, and he reached for it as he gurgled in insistent little grunts. Eulyssa laughed and glanced at Pan with her big, blue eyes.

  “Would you mind?” She asked, tipping the baby toward him.

  “Of course not,” Pan smiled. He took the little boy and held him up on his shoulder. The baby squealed and balled his little fists in Pat’s hair, tugging just enough to make him wince.

  “Oh! Toby no! Let go, let go….” Eulyssa raced over and reached up, but Pan waved her off.

  “It’s fine,” he chuckled. “Let the kid have some fun.”

  She smiled brightly and stepped back, watching as Pan let her son tug on his hair, nose, and the piercings in his ears. After a few minutes, the baby began to squawk.

  “Oh,” she said apologetically. “He’s teething.”

  “Teething? Oh no!” Pan swooped the baby down from his shoulder and cradled him, offering him a knuckle. “Teething stinks, huh buddy?”

  Toby bit down hard on Pan’s finger, sinking his sharp little fangs deep into his skin as he morphed into a fuzzy little puppy. It hurt, but Pan didn’t let it show; the baby calmed quickly, and his fangs retracted, leaving only the flat nubs of protruding human teeth. Pan let him chew for another moment while Eulyssa searched her knapsack for a soother.